Did he fight at Lookout Mountain or dine with the colonel?

The Lybarger family legend about my great-grandfather’s experience at Missionary Ridge in 1863 makes an exciting story — but what really happened is even better.

In the 1990s, my aunt wrote a “Biographical Sketch of Hon. Edwin Lewis Lybarger,” recounting his service in the Forty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War, and his many accomplishments after the war. Presumably from the stories her father told her about her grandfather, she wrote:

“Lybarger participated in the battle of Missionary Ridge in the Chattanooga campaign. He notes in his diary that those in his company knew the battle of Lookout Mountain (the “Battle Above the Clouds”) on November 24, 1863, was in progress across the valley. They could hear it and see the smoke, but the clouds were so thick they could not tell whether the Union troops were succeeding or failing. The next day, under General Grant’s command, they stormed the heights and took Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863.”

A decade later, in a box of Civil War papers and memorabilia unopened for years, I discovered the first clue that this account might not be true: a 4″x6″ thin, single sheet of paper with a handwritten invitation from Col. Wager Swayne, commander of the 43^rd OVI.

Headquarters 43^rd O.V.I., Nov. 25^th 1863

Lieutenant, Will you do me the favor to dine with me tomorrow at 2 P.M.

Very respectfully, Your obedient servant

Wager Swayne, Co. 43^rdOhio

I knew that my great-grandfather revered Col. Swayne, since he named his only son Harry Swayne Lybarger, and they corresponded for years. But why would he keep a dinner invitation for the rest of his life?

The letter was written from “Hdqts, 43^rd OVI,” on Nov. 25, for a dinner to be served on Nov. 26, a Thursday. The fourth Thursday of November.

I remember shivering with the thrill of discovery — that this date was the first official Thanksgiving Day. The colonel was gathering the regiment’s officers to comply with President Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving, issued Oct. 3, 1863. I felt like I was almost touching a paper that Lincoln had touched.

But if the 43^rd OVI was calmly in headquarters in Prospect, Tennessee planning a Thanksgiving dinner, it couldn’t have been in battle the next day, 300 miles away in Chattanooga.

Entries in Edwin Lybarger’s daily journal for 1863 confirmed my conclusion:

Nov. 17: In camp at Prospect, Tenn. Heavy details at work repairing rail road bridge.

Nov. 18: Nothing of importance going. Have plenty to eat and nothing much to do but write letters and study logic.

Nov. 25: Two years in the service today. Received in invitation to dine with Col. Swayne tomorrow. Accepted.

Nov. 26: “Thanksgiving day.” Dined with Col. Swayne together with all the officers of the 43d. & Col. Fuller our brigad[e] commander. Had a splendid dinner, served up in good style, to which I think I did ample justice.

I don’t know if my aunt heard the Missionary Ridge story from my grandfather, or read it in another account of the war. In any case, Edwin Lybarger participated in numerous Civil War battles, but not the one on Lookout Mountain.

In a biography for his children, my grandfather Harry Swayne Lybarger wrote:

“My father never said much about his war experience, but he kept a diary in four little books, which are in the safe and should never be destroyed. They are very matter of fact and he didn’t seem to yield to any literary flaire. He did not hate the South but he felt pretty keenly the injustice of the war that the south began, and never visited it again.”

Late in life, my aunt remembered the diaries, but not where they were, perhaps loaned to someone and never returned. By accident, cleaning out her closet, I found four small black books lying in the bottom of a cardboard box. Eureka. I also found my aunt’s start at transcription, unfinished. Grumbling that my great-grandfather’s a’s and o’s all looked like u’s, and that the crossing of a T never matched the upright, I nevertheless managed to transcribe all four diaries. I think I must have been the only member of the family to actually read every entry. And I loved the discovery that when he published “Leaves from my Diary,” containing his account of the March to the Sea and war’s end, he edited out any disparaging remark he made about the conduct and discipline of fellow soldiers.

Facts to fiction:

Read an excerpt of Jennifer Wilke’s historical novel-in-progress, The Color of Prayer,

inspired by these historical facts and Edwin Lybarger’s Civil War diaries.

Jan 21 2011

650 Buried Here

CAMP LAWTON, near Millen, Georgia, a Confederate prison camp for Union soldiers

October - November, 1864

When Sherman’s 17th Army Corps arrived at Camp Lawton in early December 1864, eager to liberate Union prisoners, they discovered the camp abandoned. In a long trench, they found a plank with the inscription “650 Buried Here.” Sherman’s order to burn the railroad station and government buildings in Millen was reportedly in retaliation at this news.

From the diary of Lt. Edwin L. Lybarger, 43rd OVVI, Mower’s Brigade, 17th Army Corps, Army of the Tennessee:

Dec. 1, 1864: On the march; the 1st and 4th divisions of the 17th A.C. [Army Corps] tearing up railroad; camped on Jones’ plantation, said to be one of the finest in the state.

Dec. 2: On the march; camped at Millen, Ga., where we had a slight skirmish. The railroad and all government property destroyed.

Dec. 3: Marched to a station numbered 7. Encamped for the night. Forage plenty, soil sandy, affording abundance of sweet potatoes; we didn’t take any, no, not any.

From The Colonel’s Diary, by Col. Oscar Jackson, 63rd OVVI:

Dec. 1, 1864: Move east at the usual hour. We are tearing up the Georgia Central Railroad. Our division today destroyed from the 95th to the 91st mile post from Savannah and went into camp on Judge Cook’s plantation, seven miles from the camp of last night.

Dec. 2: My company on forage duty today. Getting to the head of the column before it reached the town of Millen, Georgia, I asked permission to enter in advance of the troops to see what I could find, which condition was granted by the General in command on condition that I would keep my company well together and be cautious as I was told that the enemy had been there a few hours previous and it was not yet known that they were gone…While I was occupying the town, the enemy ran a train down near town and raised a little excitement for us…Millen is one of the noted pens the rebels have been keeping our prisoners in. The stockade is north of the town where, it is said, they did have twenty thousand. They have been removed to Savannah, the last train load only being got off this forenoon before I got into town. The railroad from Augusta intersects the Georgia Central here and there are find depot buildings, but the town, I should think never had over two thousand inhabitants, and it was completely sacked after our troops occupied it.

Dec. 3: Our corps is burning the depot, destroying the railroad, etc. General Sherman is around watching how it is done. He is a very plain, unassuming man and today is in undress uniform but has that big shirt collar on as usual. His order to General Blair this morning was to make the destruction “tenfold more devilish” that he had ever dreamed of, as this is one of the places they have been starving our prisoners. Reach camp this evening near station number 7, Scarborough, some eight miles from Millen.

from Sherman’s March by Burke Davis, Vintage Books (1988):

“[Division cavalry commander Hugh J.] Kilpatrick turned to his assignment to rescue Federal prisoners in the filthy pens at the crossroads settlement of Millen–where many survivors of the now abandoned Andersonville prison had been taken. The cavalry was too late As his riders on the banks of the Ogeechee, Kilpatrick saw the last of the prisoners being herded into boxcars by Confederates on the opposite side of the stream…

Chaplain Bradley climbed to one of the guard posts and looked down on the huts and holes where prisoners had lived: ‘It made my heart ache . . . such miserable hovels, hardly fit for swine to live in.’ He saw the shed where prisoners had been punished with stocks for seven men, ‘and they appeared to be well worn.’ Bradley heard men cursing Davis and the rebels as they left the place…

Captain Storrs of the 20th Connecticut, who drank some of the ‘very bad-tasting water’ from the stream, thought the rebels had chosen the swampy site to hasten the deaths of prisoners from malaria: ‘I am afraid if the soldiers generally could visit this pen there would be no quarter given beyond here.’

John Potter of the 101st Illinois wandered over the ground in a vain search for souvenirs: ‘It was the barest spot I ever saw. The trees and stumps and roots to the smallest fiber had been dug out for fuel, not a rag or a button or even a chip could be found.’

Alex Downing, almost sickened by the sight of the pen, was one who helped to destroy it: ‘We burned everything here a match would ignite.’ Not long afterward, some of Slocum’s men burned most of the village of Millen, including the hotel, depot and other buildings. They also burned a plantation house on the outskirts, and shot a pack of bloodhounds they found there.”

Sep 22 2009

Aunt Nancy’s 90th birthday brought the good news

On Sept. 17, 2005, her 90th birthday, Nancy Lybarger Rhoades received the news that Swallow Press at Ohio University would publish the Lybarger Civil War letters, a project she had nurtured for many years.

Nancy Rhoades (1915-2007) was the granddaughter of Edwin Lewis Lybarger (1840-1924), who served in the 43rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 1862-1865. In 1991, in a trunk in her attic, she discovered 168 letters written by several dozen women family members, friends, and sweethearts to Edwin throughout the war.

Nancy transcribed these letters, and they were published in 2009 by Ohio University’s Swallow Press, with a social commentary by Lucy E. Bailey, on the significance of women’s war work in the North during the Civil War.

WANTED–CORRESPONDENCE: Women’s Letters to a Union Soldier

Edited by Nancy L. Rhoades and Lucy E. Bailey

Fact to Fiction:

Aunt Nancy let me read the transcripts in 1996, and I read late into the night. By morning, I felt committed to writing about this family history. Since we didn’t have Edwin’s letters, only those he received and saved, I determined to write a novel in order to tell his story too.

My aunt was always the keeper of the family flame, and had been a reference librarian most of her life. It took me several years to gain her permission to write Edwin’s story as fiction. In addition to the letters, she trusted me with Edwin’s other war papers, and I made some great discoveries.

My best discoveries were Edwin’s daily journals, which Nancy thought had been lost, loaned to someone and never returned. But when I saw four small bound notebooks in the bottom of a box, I knew immediately what they were. They were written over four years, 1862 through 1865, a mainly straightforward log of his whereabouts each day. I spent several months transcribing them, my progress impeded by Edwin’s often illegible handwriting. But the ink was durable, I was persistent, and I eventually succeeded in discovering Edwin’s day by day itinerary throughout the war. This became the accurate bones for my novel.

Some years have passed since I first read the Lybarger letters, but after extensive research and several revised drafts, I have completed a novel that is based on Edwin Lybarger’s Civil War diaries and letters. The title has evolved from Civilities to The Arithmetic to The Color of Prayer.

I hope Aunt Nancy would be pleased.

May 21 2009

The Union Army licensed the “public women” of Smokey Row

From The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War, by Thomas P. Lowry, MD. (Stackpole Books, 1994):

In Nashville, Tennessee, “public women” practiced prostitution in Smokey Row, an area two blocks wide and four blocks long. For three-quarters of a mile on either side of Spring (now Church) Street, every shack or building along Front, Market, College, and Cherry (now First, Second, Third, and Fourth) Streets was a house of ill fame. In the census of 1860, 207 women listed their occupation as “prostitute.” Eighty-seven were illiterate, 198 were white and 9 mulatto. The youngest was 15, the oldest 59; mean age was 23.

On March 12, 1862, Andrew Johnson arrived as military governor of Tennessee. With the presence of 30,000 Union soldiers in the vicinity, venereal disease soon spread. Several doctors advertised dispensaries for treating “private diseases.”

Union Lt. Col. George Spalding, 18th Michigan, was provost marshal to keep order in Nashville. In 1863, he proposed:

1. That a license be issued to each prostitute, a record of which shall be kept at this office, together with the number and street of her residence.

2. That one skillful surgeon be appointed as a Board of Examination, whose duty it shall be to examine personally, every week, each licensed prostitute, giving certificates of soundness to those who are healthy and ordering into hospital those who are in the slightest degree diseased.

3. That a building suitable for a hospital for the invalids be taken for that purpose, and that a weekly tax of 50 cents be levied on each prostitute for the purposes of defraying the expenses of said hospital.

4. That all public women found plying their vocation without license and certificate be at once arrested and incarcerated in the workhouse for a period of not less than 30 days.

Prostitute Licence for Anna Johnson, dated Nov. 24, 1863, in Nashville, Tennessee, signed by Provost Marshal Lt. Col. George Spalding. (National Archives)

As of April 30, 1864, 352 women were licensed, and 92 infected women had been treated in the new facility created for this problem. By early summer, licensing was extended to “colored prostitutes.”

The examinations were required every 14 days, later shortened to every 10 days. Those who passed were issued a certificate. Those who failed were sent to Hospital No. 11 (“the Female Venereal Hospital,” or ”Pest House”), in the former residence of the Catholic bishop on Market Street, just north of Locust Street. The doctor assigned to the hospital was Surgeon R. Fletcher, US Volunteers. The matron, nurse, and cook are colored women. The provost marshal furnished guards, under orders to admit no one, under any pretext. The guards also enforced the rule prohibiting profane language; offenders were given solitary confinement. When women were cured they were “returned to duty.”

In a letter dated Aug. 15, 1864, Dr. Fletcher wrote:

“After the attempt to reduce disease by the forcible expulsion of the prostitutes had, as it always has, utterly failed, the more philosophic plan of recognizing and controlling an ineradicable evil has met with undoubted success.”

The Union Army also ran Hospital No. 15, with 140 beds for soldiers with venereal diseases, in a 3-story brick building near Summer Street, that had been a school before the war. In the 1860′s, antibiotics weren’t available. The remedy for syphilis in 1865 was salts of mercury, leading to the saying, “A night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury.”

Nashville remains America’s first experiment with legalized, regulated prostitution.

THEN now

intrigues of Civil War history & fiction

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